


Eighty-Six Years

by MissMudpie



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-14
Updated: 2015-05-14
Packaged: 2018-03-30 14:04:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3939559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissMudpie/pseuds/MissMudpie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a little drabble of Oliver and Felicity's adventures from the road.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eighty-Six Years

“We are his Plan B,” Malcolm says, just as the speaker on one of her computers comes to life with a burst of static.

“-el-…Fel…ty. Anyone?”

She runs to the station, fingers flying over the keyboard as she tries to clean up the transmission. “Oliver! Oliver!”

Malcolm leans in, and she has to resist the urge to push him away. “Where are you? Where is Ra’s?”

“Ra’s jumped out. He has the virus.”

“What do you mean, Ra’s jumped out?” Felicity demands, just as Laurel shouts.

“Look!” 

A streak of red brightens the sky. A plane, falling to earth too fast.

“No,” she whimpers.

“Felicity.” His voice sounds tired, resigned. Broken. “I’m sorry. For everything. I’m so sorry. I – ”

The transmission cuts out just as the plane crashes. The windows shake as Felicity screams. “NO!”

Her eyes pop open.

She forces herself to take three deep breaths.

She’s safe. He’s safe.

They’re safe.

Quietly, so as not to disturb him, she gets out of bed. It’s ultimately a futile gesture; his senses will alert him soon enough, if not already, that she’s no longer nestled against him. Still, she muses as she slips on his discarded shirt, it’s the thought that counts.

The sea breeze is cool on her over-heated skin. It had been hot that day, almost too hot, and the wooden deck beneath her bare feet still seems to have retained some of that warmth. The moon is barely a sliver, and if she’d brought her glasses with her, she knows she’d be staring at a star-filled sky. As it is, the darkness hides the ocean, the sounds of waves gently crashing on the shore the only indication that it’s there at all. She tries to match her breathing with the pulse of the waves.

“Hey.” His voice is low and soft in her ear. When he wraps his arms around her waist she leans back against him, her own hands coming up to strokes his arms. “Sword?”

She shakes her head. “The plane.” She feels more than hears his humming response.

They’d left Starling ten days ago, driving towards a glorious sunset. The first nightmare came on night six, when Oliver woke up shouting in Arabic. That was when she’d learned about what, exactly, Ra’s had forced him to do. When she’d learned he’d killed a young man who wore John’s face. 

It was the most she’d ever heard Oliver talk. And then neither had talked for a while, sunrise coming just as she did.

It was like the last bit of weight had been lifted from him.

That was when her nightmares started. 

Night eight saw him skewered once more by Ra’s’ sword.

Night nine, and she doesn’t make it to the dam in time, watching in horror fifty feet away as Oliver crashes into the water below.

And now tonight. The plane.

This one’s the worst, she decides. Worse than the sword, worse than being too late. Because with his one…

“You got on that plane, expecting to die.” He takes a deep and sudden intake of air. “If all had gone according to plan, you would have died on that plane.” She pauses to wipe a rogue tear from her eye; she refuses to cry about anything that happened during those weeks he was gone, not again. Never again. “That’s what I can’t shake.”

Oliver’s arms tighten around her. “I know,” he whispers, laying soft kisses in her hair, on her temple before resting his chin on her shoulder. He’s silent for a few moments. Then, “While I was gone, I went to Central City.”

Felicity nods. “I’d figured as much. How else would Barry know where and when to find us?”

“I helped him fight Wells, the,” he pauses, “the Reverse Flash,” and in spite of herself, Felicity grins, because she can tell how much Barry’s Super Villain Code Names still chafe him. “Turns out he’s a time traveller from the future.”

“And I thought earthquake machines and Mirakuru soldiers were weird.”

“He almost killed me.”

“He what?!” She tries to turn to face him, but Oliver holds her fast.

“Felicity. Felicity.” She stops struggling against him. “Almost. Barry knocked him away. But before that, he, Wells.” Oliver gives an incredulous laugh. “He said I’d live to be 86.”

Again she makes to turn, and this time he lets her, still holding her close as her hands come to rest on his chest. “If your excuse for going on a planned suicide mission is that some psychopath from the future told you it would be okay…”

“It’s not. I didn’t even think about it again until a few days after we’d defeated Ra’s.” His eyes move to stare over her shoulder, into the dark. “But, Felicity…I should be dead. Many times over. Not just that night, but all the nights before, in Russia, Hong Kong, the Island. And now I can’t help thinking…” His voice trails off, so she picks up for him.

“You can’t help thinking that maybe it’s true.” When he nods but still won’t meet her eyes, she cups his face with one hand, gently stroking his cheek. “Why is this worrying you?”

“I don’t know,” he admits. “I think.” He rubs a hand up under her – his – shirt, caressing her back. “I think I’m still getting used to living, not just surviving. To being happy.”

She guides his face down so she can kiss him lightly, then rests her forehead against his. “Just promise me no more suicide missions.”

“I don’t think that will be a problem.”

“I mean it, Oliver,” she says, and something in her tone makes him pull back slightly.

“I do, too. That life – ”

“That life is on hiatus. But Oliver, we both know that sooner or later, we’ll have to go back. Someone is going to need you, and you’ll have to go save the world again. Because you’re a hero, Oliver. That’s who you are, and I love you for it. Just don’t ever make plans without me again. Especially if those plans involve getting yourself killed.”

He stares at her for a moment. His mouth opens, as if to argue, but then closes, and she knows he agrees, that this isn’t a permanent retirement. That he’ll have to take up the bow again, someday.

So, instead, he simply nods. “But we’ve got time.”

Felicity smiles. “Yeah. We have time.”

“Good.” And he leans down to kiss her slowly, deeply. “Come back to bed,” he whispers, and it’s clear from his tone they won’t be going back to sleep.

“I wonder what, exactly, you do to make the history books,” she ponders aloud as they cross over the small deck and back into the bungalow. “I mean, is it as Oliver Queen, CEO?” He snorts at that. “As the Arrow? Do people in the future know you were the Arrow?”

He strips her of the shirt. “Get in bed.”

“Or maybe something else?” she continues as he removes his underwear and covers her body with his, skin on skin. “Do you invent something? Run for office?”

He silences her with a long kiss, and then looks down at her with an odd expression.

“What?”

“Maybe he knows my name through your biography.”

She smiles widely. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he breathes against her skin, kissing his way down the column of her neck.

“So, in this hypothetical biography – ”

“Felicity – ”

“Are you a chapter? A couple of chapters? Or…”

He stops kissing her neck to look her in the eyes. “As long as you’ll have me.”

“You sure? Fifty-six years is an awful long time to listen to me babble.”

“Felicity,” he says in that special tone reserved only for her. He takes her hands in his, stretching them over her head, and then slides inside her. As he begins to slowly move, he murmurs, “Fifty-six years isn’t nearly long enough.”


End file.
